County Championship Preview: Derbyshire
Derbyshire fell out of promotion contention late. After drawing so many last year can they win some more this year?
Derbyshire had a transformative season where they just couldn’t get over the line at Home with all 6 matches at Derby being draws. They will hope they have strengthened the Batting and Bowling enough that they could roll a Spicier Pitch and still get runs or keep rolling the Flatter Pitches and trust the Bowlers to get them over the line.
After the dismal 2021 where they couldn’t buy a run having a coach with an International reputation in Mickey Arthur spurred them on to challenge for promotion until the Penultimate match where they got a Drubbing from Glamorgan.
While they have lost Run Machine Shan Masood they still have the County Championships top run-scorer last year Wayne Madsen who scored 1273 runs at 60. They also had All-Rounder Anuj Dal who scored 957 runs at 73.
The bowling was a problem with no front line bowler averaging under 30 except Anuj Dal who took 38 wickets at 29. Their key will be to get over the line with Wins as Draws have dropped from 8 to 5 points this season.
With Haider Ali joining he is likely to Open the batting but this could be hit or miss with him not playing a First Class game since 2021 but he opened and hit a century in that game and has a First-Class record of 978 runs at an average of 54.33.
Predicted Line-Up:
Haider Ali
Luis Reece
Brooke Guest (WK)
Wayne Madsen
Leus Du Plooy
Matthew Lamb
Anuj Dal
Mark Watt
Ben Aitchison
Suranga Lakmal
Sam Conners
Previous Previews: